EPUB-KEPUB Conversion problem

[wff]

Hi JSWolf,
Thank you for your help.
I tried it too before asking for help. I explained it in my first post:

Originally Posted by wff

I sent the original ePub to kobo, and there was no problem of display and spaces and other stuff. But I need Kepub, because I like to see the real page number even when I change font size or margins.

It is the way I read it for now, with ePub on my Kobo device. But I would really love to have it as KePub, to display the real number of pages when I change font size or margins.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by wff

Hi DNSB and davidfor,
Thank you very much for your answers!
I tried a lot of things with justify, and it doesn't seem to work.
I noticed these thin spaces before and after some signs (like ! ? ; " ) and I was wondering if it was part of the issue, but as I am not used to epub code, I was not sure.
So I will try to search and replace, so hopefully I can get rid of the thin spaces. How could I proceed to manage leading spaces in paragraphs?

There has been a bit of discussion on how Kobo handles non-English punctuation like this. The conclusion is basically, "not very well". In this case, the extra spaces and line breaks in the book code is making it worse. But, they should be ignored. Or treated as a single space. And not justifying the text helps. Or probably just hides some of the errors. As @JSWolf pointed out, the RMSDK used for epubs appears to handle these better. But, I think it has other issues with this sort of thing. I don't remember what, I'm just sure it has come up in the past.

[wff]

Originally Posted by davidfor

There has been a bit of discussion on how Kobo handles non-English punctuation like this. The conclusion is basically, "not very well". In this case, the extra spaces and line breaks in the book code is making it worse. But, they should be ignored. Or treated as a single space. And not justifying the text helps. Or probably just hides some of the errors. As @JSWolf pointed out, the RMSDK used for epubs appears to handle these better. But, I think it has other issues with this sort of thing. I don't remember what, I'm just sure it has come up in the past.

That's not good news :-(
But what remains strange to me is that it is the only book I have this issue with.
Would you like me to show you a sample of another French book?

[wff]

Bingo, guys, fix may be on its way :-)
It seems that thin spaces were responsible for my problem.
I performed several "search and replace" after copying epub code in TextEdit:
- EN DASH replaced with –
- THIN SPACE replaced with   (for each punctuation sign, like ! ? ")
- Extra spaces replaced with single space
It looks great until now, but I have fixed just one chapter... Lot of work ahead :-)
I took SS to show you.
Thanks again everyone! I will tell you if everything is ok once it's done.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by wff

Hi JSWolf,
Thank you for your help.
I tried it too before asking for help. I explained it in my first post:



It is the way I read it for now, with ePub on my Kobo device. But I would really love to have it as KePub, to display the real number of pages when I change font size or margins.

Sorry, but you are incorrect. KePub page numbers have changed in the 4.20.x firmware. So if you've been reading KePub because of the way the page number used to work, then you don't need KePub any longer. ADE uses a similar page numbering that doesn't change when you change settings such as the font, font size, margins, and line height. KePub is one page to one screen and any of those settings that you change will change the page numbers.

You have two choices. Read in ePub where the text looks as it should or read in KePub with all those lovely gaps due to bugs in the Access renders (that displays KePub).

But remember, the ePub page number is more real then the current KePub page numbering.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by wff

Bingo, guys, fix may be on its way :-)
It seems that thin spaces were responsible for my problem.
I performed several "search and replace" after copying epub code in TextEdit:
- EN DASH replaced with –
- THIN SPACE replaced with   (for each punctuation sign, like ! ? ")
- Extra spaces replaced with single space
It looks great until now, but I have fixed just one chapter... Lot of work ahead :-)
I took SS to show you.
Thanks again everyone! I will tell you if everything is ok once it's done.

Why are you doing this the hard way? Load the ePub into the Calibre editor. You can do a search/replace in every HTML and not have to do this over and over for every HTML.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by wff

That's not good news :-(
But what remains strange to me is that it is the only book I have this issue with.
Would you like me to show you a sample of another French book?

From my testing, the rendering problems are exasperated by the extra spaces and line feeds in the text. I think that if you look at the other books, you won't find these.

Originally Posted by wff

Bingo, guys, fix may be on its way :-)
It seems that thin spaces were responsible for my problem.
I performed several "search and replace" after copying epub code in TextEdit:
- EN DASH replaced with –
- THIN SPACE replaced with   (for each punctuation sign, like ! ? ")
- Extra spaces replaced with single space
It looks great until now, but I have fixed just one chapter... Lot of work ahead :-)
I took SS to show you.
Thanks again everyone! I will tell you if everything is ok once it's done.

I think those are some of the suggestions made before. But, the are some issues as where you are putting the non-breaking space, the thin space is more correct. I think wrapping the text to remove extra spaces and line breaks is the first thing to do. I use the following saved search in the calibre editor to do this:

([\w-.,’”"'–;:\!…\?])\s*\n+\s*([\w"'’‘“]|<i)

With the replace text:

\1 \2

That matches most of what I have found when trying to wrap the text in paragraphs and replacing the line break with a single space. It isn't perfect, and have added things over time. It could probably be simplified, but, it works for me.

[wff]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sorry, but you are incorrect. KePub page numbers have changed in the 4.20.x firmware. So if you've been reading KePub because of the way the page number used to work, then you don't need KePub any longer. ADE uses a similar page numbering that doesn't change when you change settings such as the font, font size, margins, and line height. KePub is one page to one screen and any of those settings that you change will change the page numbers.

You have two choices. Read in ePub where the text looks as it should or read in KePub with all those lovely gaps due to bugs in the Access renders (that displays KePub).

But remember, the ePub page number is more real then the current KePub page numbering.

Sorry, I may have been unclear. What I want is one page to one screen. As you guess, I would rather read without those gaps, and that's what I would do if I don't succeed to converse the ePub file.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why are you doing this the hard way? Load the ePub into the Calibre editor. You can do a search/replace in every HTML and not have to do this over and over for every HTML.

I may have done something wrong, but when I tried to search for thin spaces, I found nothing, so I gave up and did it in TextEdit. I would be glad to know where I was wrong!

Originally Posted by davidfor

From my testing, the rendering problems are exasperated by the extra spaces and line feeds in the text. I think that if you look at the other books, you won't find these.

Indeed, I didn't find that, nor did I find thin spaces (but I just checked 3 books).

Originally Posted by davidfor

I think those are some of the suggestions made before. But, the are some issues as where you are putting the non-breaking space, the thin space is more correct. I think wrapping the text to remove extra spaces and line breaks is the first thing to do. I use the following saved search in the calibre editor to do this:

([\w-.,’”"'–;:\!…\?])\s*\n+\s*([\w"'’‘“]|<i)

With the replace text:

\1 \2

That matches most of what I have found when trying to wrap the text in paragraphs and replacing the line break with a single space. It isn't perfect, and have added things over time. It could probably be simplified, but, it works for me.

Thank you very much, I will try that and I will let you know if it fixes my problem

I performed the hard "search and replace" thing on all the full epub. Results are satisfying to me. To be honest, it doesn't bother me to replace thin spaces with non breaking spaces. All the books I have read so far are formatted this way, and it doesn't catch my eyes while reading.

I would like to thank you all for your help. It was very useful to me to listen to your advices. I have learned a lot. I will keep you posted with the method I am happier with. Thanks again, guys.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by wff

Sorry, I may have been unclear. What I want is one page to one screen. As you guess, I would rather read without those gaps, and that's what I would do if I don't succeed to converse the ePub file.

The problem was that you used the term "real page numbers" and Jon saw it. As far as he is concerned, the "One True Page Numbering System" is the Adobe system. He probably stopped buying paper books because they don't use it

There is a lot of discussion about page numbering in ebooks here. In fact, there is so much, that I wonder if some people bring it up when they are bored. Luckily, it is usually polite. Overall, it comes down to a personal preference for either page-per-screen as used for kepubs, or some other equally arbitrary method.

I performed the hard "search and replace" thing on all the full epub. Results are satisfying to me. To be honest, it doesn't bother me to replace thin spaces with non breaking spaces. All the books I have read so far are formatted this way, and it doesn't catch my eyes while reading.

If this is for books you are reading, the only important thing is that you can read them. And maybe that you don't spend to much time fiddling with them. The reading is the important thing. I think a lot of us here forget that.

[wff]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The problem was that you used the term "real page numbers" and Jon saw it. As far as he is concerned, the "One True Page Numbering System" is the Adobe system. He probably stopped buying paper books because they don't use it

LOL. OK, copy that. I will keep this rule in mind in the future

Originally Posted by davidfor

If this is for books you are reading, the only important thing is that you can read them. And maybe that you don't spend to much time fiddling with them. The reading is the important thing. I think a lot of us here forget that.

Yes, I totally agree. Luckily, it is the only book to behave this way after conversion. I guess if every single book looked like that, I would have used the ePub file or changed my reader :-)

I tried the code you gave me yesterday (thanks again). It wrapped very well the text in paragraphs and replaced all the line break, but it didn't fix my "gap problem". I do really think the thin spaces are responsible for that. Replacing them with normal spaces fixed the issue.

I found that yesterday. I think it may explain the problem with thin spaces in a French kepub file.

Thank you very much once again !!

[retiredbiker]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I use the following saved search in the calibre editor to do this:

([\w-.,’”"'–;:\!…\?])\s*\n+\s*([\w"'’‘“]|<i)

With the replace text:

\1 \2

That matches most of what I have found when trying to wrap the text in paragraphs and replacing the line break with a single space. It isn't perfect, and have added things over time. It could probably be simplified, but, it works for me.

Well, if you want simple, I use this: Make sure there are no parsing errors, then search for \s+ and replace with a space. Then do the "beautify all files" thing. It is sort of a dynamite solution, but I've not had any trouble with it.